Tragic lost story by F Scott Fitzgerald published

A long-lost short story written by the author of The Great Gatsby a year before he died has been published for the first time, 76 years after it was rejected by a magazine.

The discovery of F Scott Fitzgerald’s 8,000-word tale in a university archive has been hailed as a major find by literary experts, not least because of the light that it sheds on the author in the troubled final months of his life.

Fitzgerald implied strongly at the start of Temperature that it was autobiographical: “And as for that current dodge ‘No reference to any living character is intended’; no use even trying that.”

The story, dated July 1939, concerns a hard-drinking young writer who has had heart disease diagnosed, and his failure